After one of those brilliant ‘why didn’t we think of this sooner?’ moments of inspiration, DiS has decided to go (sort of) head to head with the Nationwide Mercury Prize and run our own reader-voted (!) Pluto Prize.

The why: DiS feels that there are some glaring omissions on the Mercury list this year. We're not saying the list, which includes Adele, The Last Shadow Puppets and Estelle, is wrong; we’re saying that there are lots of albums that definitely deserve to be celebrated as ‘best of British’, and the Pluto allows us to highlight 12 that missed the Mercury cut.

And why Pluto? Because it’s about as far away from Mercury as you can get in the Solar System, it’s well beyond freezing cold, and it isn’t even technically a planet anymore. We like Pluto. And feel sorry for Pluto. We say, a la Aesop Rock: “bring back Pluto”. Failing that, we’ll just name an award (of sorts) after the largest body in the Kuiper Belt and be happy with that. Happy.

Below are 12 albums from UK acts that we at DiS feel are Really Quite Special; all have been celebrated by a number of our writers and, if not 100 per cent universally praised across the DiS board(s) (what is?), have been rated very highly indeed as some of the best domestic records of the past 12 months. All were released in the time period used by the Mercury Prize (roughly July 2007 to July 2008), and the only bands excluded from inclusion are those already up for this year’s Mercury. So there’s no Radiohead or British Sea Power, although both would otherwise have been listed below.

The how: *Registered users can vote for *one of the below-listed albums, and one only. So make your vote count. On September 8 voting will close, and the winner of the inaugural Pluto Prize announced on September 9, the same day as the Mercury winner. The prize itself? We’ve not completely decided what form it’ll take, but if we’re really stuck for ideas we’ll simply mail the winners the Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong album nobody is meant to hear.

Remember, you can only vote for one album from the shortlisted 12. Unlike the Mercury proper, a panel will not decide the outcome of the Pluto Prize – you will. Every vote counts, so tell your friends to get voting if you’re all in love with the same band. You must be registered to vote, so if you’re new to DiS sign up using the box to the right of the screen, and then get _on_ this. In the event of a draw: a battle to the death.